Dragon’s blood (Croton lechleri): from traditional use to stand-ard dosage

The tree species Croton lechleri, popularly known in the Brazilian Amazon as “sangue-de-dragão” due to the reddish color of its latex, is used by traditional communities as a home remedy of internal use for various diseases. Given its use without scien-tific proof of its efficacy, standardized dosage through tests and experiments must be carried out for safe and effective use of the latex. The allometric scale is one of the most used methods to evaluate the initial dose of a component since it takes into ac-count the various systematic processes of each species and individual. Based on the study by Nair and Jacob (2016), in which the conversion of the dosage from animals to humans is demonstrated, and also studies on the oral dosage of Croton latex for animals, we propose here the conversion of the oral dosage using the allometric scale, via which the human equivalent dose is equal to 32.43 mg/kg.